The author of Solar Storms is
not Hulk Hogan’s wife.
Solar Storms
Chickasaw
--Oklahoma
“Barbara J. Cook has suggested
that in Solar Storms, Hogan
purposely omits the name of the
tribe to which the characters belong
in order to avoid this expectation of
translation (43) because, as Hogan
has said in an interview, she ‘is
fictionalizing the tribes I'm writing
about so nobody feels like they're
being invaded once again’ (qtd. in
Cook 43).”
Discussion ?s
--important motifs
--significance of maps
--food
--dualities
--AIM
--memory (and maps!)
--mirrors
--religion
--Native American/American Indian novel
--ecocriticism
--the body/scarring
--fear
--setting driven novel?
“The late 1960s and early '70s witnessed a publishing
explosion for Native American studies…The
acceptance of Native American literature as literature,
and not as ethnography or anthropology, was a
crucial move in this formative stage…Owens's
comment about the ‘thoroughly 'Indian' story and
discourse’ of House Made of Dawn touches upon one
of the most fiercely contested issues in Native
American literary studies today: what makes a book,
a poem, a story, an author ‘authentic’ or ‘native’? A
number of writers have protested the assumption
that native literature must be about ‘braids, beads,
and buckskin’ (Owens, Mixedblood 13) or ‘Mother
Earth’ and ‘Father Sky’ (Alexie 13) to be considered
‘native.’ In fact, Sherman Alexie, responding to this
issue, in a less-than-generous moment declared to an
interviewer, ‘We've been stuck in place since House
Made of Dawn’ (9).”
“Ecocriticism is an interdisciplinary field of inquiry that
has developed over the past twenty years in response to
growing academic concern about the responses of
literature and literary theory to the global crisis of
environmental degradation. Both ethically and
practically, ecocriticism decenters humanity's
importance in nonhuman nature and nature writing…and
instead explores the complex interrelationships between
the human and the nonhuman (a biocentric view).
Despite this deemphasis on humanity's place within the
world, ecocriticism does not ignore ethical or practical
concerns for human readers. Analogous to the
decentering of patriarchal assumptions and values
enacted by feminist theory and practice, ecocriticism's
biocentrism instead allows writers and critics to explore
the interconnectedness of all nature, human and
nonhuman, rather than merely looking at nonhuman
nature as setting and/or metaphor for the human
condition. As Cheryll Burgess-Glotfelty explains,
‘ecocritics ask questions like 'How does literature
function within the ecosystem?' or 'How does a given
textual representation affect the way we treat actual
nature?’" (2).
“Ecofeminism (ecological
feminism) is a philosophy
that draws a connection
between the domination of
sexual, ethnic and social
minorities, and the
domination of nonhuman
nature.”
“[Ecofem scholar Ynestra]
King emphasizes that the
main goals of ecofeminism,
‘human liberation and the
liberation of nature are
inextricably connected, as
are the ecological and the
social crisis’ (730).”
American Indian and First
Nations texts like Hogan’s lend
themselves perfectly to this kind
of reading (see “Fighting for
the Mother/Land An
Ecofeminist Reading of
Linda Hogan's Solar
Storms” by Silvia
Schultermandl.
“When ecofeminist critic
Mary Daly asserts that
‘everything is connected’
(11), she does so with the
implication that racism,
sexism, and ecological
domination are products of
the same hierarchical
structures within society.”
“[Through the course of the
novel Angel is]
Reestablishing the initial
bonds within her cultural,
geo-political, and spiritual
world…”
“In this sense, Solar Storms treats matrilineage as gynocratic principle of
cultural resistance against Western domination of Native American tribes
and lands. As Paula Gunn Allen argues in The Sacred Hoop (1986),
‘physical and cultural genocide of American Indian tribes is and was
mostly about patriarchal fear of gynocracy’ (3). In the gynocratic society
of Solar Storms, the individual members cherish their bonds with each
other and their bonds with the animals, plants, and natural elements
around them equally. This depiction of a female, environmentalist society
emphasizes the importance of inter-female relationships for the
preservation of the ancestral culture. Women in Hogan's writing are not
better equipped to assume environmental responsibility, they ‘simply are
the leaders in the community, and the connections that count . . . are
those between women’ (Tarter 143-44). In Solar Storms, Hogan
interconnects Angel's environmentalist concern with her fight for the
continuity of her matrilineal heritage.”
This helps to understand how
important it was for Angel to
reconnect with her mother, how
forgiving she is. “In her ability to
look at her mother beyond the
normative ideals of motherhood/
womanhood imposed by a
patriarchal society, Angel liberates
herself from the Euro-American
society.”
“Writing Deeper Maps:
Mapmaking, Local
Indigenous
Knowledges, and
Literary Nationalism in
Native Women’s
Writing” by Kelli Lyon
Johnson, Studies in
American Indian
Literatures
“European maps have long
been taken as transparent,
scientific, objective, and
universal--as if they were
merely precise
representations of actual
space in the world.”
“As many Native nations
assert their inherent
sovereignty, they insist on
controlling their own
territory and thus seek to
map it through the use of
their own nation-specific
conventions.”
“A full understanding of
Native maps relies not on a
European understanding of
scientific geography but of
the context--and the
narrative--that accompanied
each Native-made map.”
Cocoons: "we are cocoons
who consume our own
bodies and at death we fly
away transformed and
beautiful" (89).
Discussion ?s
--important motifs
--significance of maps
--food
--dualities
--memory (and maps!)
--mirrors
--religion
--the body/scarring
--fear
--setting driven novel?
Debbie Reese!